X-Com Enemy Unknown (PC)

I really love X-Com Enemy Unknown - I didn't have any prior knowledge of the series and quickly started a game on Medium and turned on Ironman to make it more interesting, more serious. Then I started learning about the game...

I had pretty much screwed up so badly by the eighth mission that I knew I wasn't going to beat the game, I had underestimated or not even realized the importance of satellites or interceptors and although I was getting better at strategy on the ground I lost all my veterans on one terrible mission where I was half paying attention and half watching the kids.... everyone died *sob*.

I think I stopped playing because I wanted to take it seriously and I noticed that every time I played I was just "checking in" playing a mission and then I had to turn it off again and go back to real life. That's actually the reason I got it on the PC, I wanted to take it seriously, sit down and actually play it - if I had it on my iPad (I thought) I would be jumping in and out of the action like I do on many mobile games.

So after not playing again for a good long time I jumped in again 'just to get a feel for it again' and probably I would get hooked again. Turns out I was right - except I also played another mission and got so badly whooped that I have decided to start all over.... This time without Ironman, because I am a wuss and I guess I want to start feeling like I am winning this thing for once.

Lesson Learned : X-Com is another game you can't just jump in and out of and think that it's not going to have consequences.

The Walking Dead: Assault

This game I picked up right before Halloween. It was on sale for 99¢. What first grabbed me were the graphics which were taken from the comic books not the TV show. There is no dialog and the game is sparse as far as story however the story is in the comic books or the show, not the mobile game. The levels are fun and well built, a nice addition are thugs or aggressive survivors. Here a choice can be made. Kill the thugs with ranged weapons or beat them unconscious with melee weapons. One nice and surprising touch, which I would love to see built into other games was a reward system. This rewarded the player with supplies and, this is what pleasantly surprised me, images of the comic book artwork!

Absenteeism

So I've been a bad blogger as of late.

Here I was, blabbing away at how awesome my MAME cabinet was going to be, and how nostalgia would blah blah blah... then, BAM!  No more posts.

Well, lots has been going on.  My wife and I recently celebrated the arrival of our firstborn, JonnyNostalgia Jr.  Needless to say this has been keeping us more than busy.

In what little free time I've had I've been trying to take advantage of the Terraria 1.2 patch.  It's hard to get anything done when you're only playing in 15 minute stretches, but I have to say, this new patch breathed a whole lot of awesome new life into an already amazing game.

As for the MAME side of things, I have been doing more plotting and research than anything else.  I did however just order my control panel bits and pieces and I'm hoping to be able to build a mock-up control panel for use in my house.  As I'm writing this I'm installing the GameEx frontend.  I want to see how it stacks up versus HyperSpin.  Although I have HyperSpin working, I'm still kind of resentful at how steep of a learning curve there was in figuring it out at first.  You can only read, 'Check the forums' so many times before you start to get annoyed at a community.  Anyhow, I'll elaborate on that further at a later date so I can actually go in to detail.

As always, stay tuned for more as there will be more... at some point.

King Cashing 2 (iOS)

I've had King Cashing on my radar for a while - I think because I had "Tower of Fortune" on my iphone for a while and although I really liked it's style it was hampered by some balancing issues, control issues and IAPs. Slot-machine games just seemed like such a strange genre to me, I guess I was interested, so I added it to my watch list and forgot about it.

Until it came down in price for Halloween this year! It was only 1€ and since it's got such good reviews I wanted to give it a try. What really sold me was what I read in the app description : "The idea for the first King Cashing came while playing Kairosoft's Game Dev Story. When making a Slots/RPG hybrid in the game, I wondered what that would look like in real life and thus King Cashing was born."

I've also played Game Dev Story and made some pretty strange genre-mixes while playing and always wondered: 'What would that look like?'

So how does a Slot machine / RPG work? Actually a lot like a normal RPG. You spend money to enter a fight, spin, stop the reels and try to make a match. If you match the first reel (party members) and the third reel (enemies) then damage is done, if you can match the second reel (weapons) then more damage is done, and if you can match the right weapon to the right party member then extra bonus damage is done. Battle time is limited to the number of cherries you have (3 are used per spin) and if you win the battle you win gold, some experience points and maybe a weapon.

As you play you will be playing through a comic book (at the time of writing this there are 4 books available) they layout a loose story, which isn't much of a story but it sure beats some type of level select opinion that a lot of lazy games use. You battle different opponents with different resistances and masterys - and again: no IAPs, if you beat an opponent with a gold star rating it is 'free' to battle them next time, making griding very easy.

The art style is great. The comic, the menus, the pixel graphics on the actual slot machine game - they all work perfectly, for a simple game it's got a lot of art, opponents aren't reused and because of that I have kept playing - just to see the art work.

There are loads of different weapons and combos and you have to make decisions whether to go for power or hit rate - and what to take into battle, along with bonus items and team members.

The characters in the comics that you battle all have their own pixel icon - as do your zombie companions and the weapons. This is the beast tamer getting a critical hit : wowzers!

Win a battle and you get what you pretty much get in any RPG when winning a battle : gold, experience and chance at a weapon or item. It really is a slot machine-rpg....which makes you think, maybe all RPGs are slot machine games wrapped in stories and "choices." King Cashing 2 gets it right.

Shelter (PC)

Shelter provided a welcome (albeit short) distraction tonight. 

After watching the first trailer I almost pre-ordered. But held back because of Might & Delight's other game 'Pid' (which was also beautiful, but sadly shallow and a little dull gameplay-wise)

 

The chance to play a parental badger protecting and leading it's cubs got me so excited I jotted down notes for a few different "animal simulation" games.

The endearing graphics use patterns to give the whole world a quilted look - but somehow the paleness of the colours put me off a little; as if I was looking through a grey veil.

The gameplay isn't much to brag about - it's not the simulation game that the trailer made me think it was, but it was a memorable little game, with great music and art - and a somber finale. I'm not even bothered by the shortness of it: better short and sweet than long and tedious.

October : Torchlight II

I'm finding that one of my biggest problems as a gaming junkie (yes, I have finally decided that I am no longer simply an addict but it's full on junkie now....) is that I am constantly switching games, partially because I have hoarded all kinds of games and also because I somehow feel obligated to "test" games although that is not my job and I often find myself playing something I was pretty sure was going to be poor from the get go.

So, to combat these missteps and regain some control and hopefully have some fun - I choose to only play Torchlight II during October.

As my other attempts to fight back against my addiction (not getting an Xbox 360: failed, Halo 3 being my last Xbox 360 game: failed, giving up on online competitive gaming: failed, only buying 5 games in 2012: failed, cutting back on gaming in general in 2013: failed) this attempt failed too. I did play a lot of Torchlight - and I love that game - but without anyone to show my equipment to or friends to play with the game does really drag -  and I don't want to have to play with strangers.....urg.

I continued on, but I also poked around in the Ouya (MirrorMoon Ep), bought and "tested" a few games on the iPhone and iPad - and on Steam too. I had to get "The Wolf Among Us" and play straight away...but that was only 1 evening, so that barely counts, right? And Halloween distracted me some, as you can already see from my posts. Overall it was a good experiment though because I am slowly learning about what I want from a game and what I need from a game like this (people to play with). If they would just bring out the Mac version already I could convert some people I am sure.

I don't know if I will return to Torchlight in November. I would like to try Gone Home again, although it over-heated my graphics card and shut down my computer (!!!) and I am now playing Daily Challenges on Spelunky (dang it online Leaderboards got me again) - and I'd like to look into my XCom game again before I forget what I was doing.

Slender - The Eight Pages (PC)

I don't usually play games simply with the intention of scaring myself, but that is what I set out to do with Slender. Shocks in horror movies usually don't me, because I am concentrating on how they angled their camera or trying to guess the plot the whole time and don't really let my guard down, but in Slender you have to interact with the world and therefore you are far more vulnerable.

You're in a dark forest with only a flashlight, which I later found out has only a limited amount of battery power - you can lower your flashlight to run but are otherwise walking very very slowly through the dark woods looking for the "eight pages." Just when you think 'hey, this isn't so bad....' a new soundeffect comes into the mix, a heart beat which makes your own heart beat, you begin checking behind yourself more although it's getting darker and you aren't quite sure what you are seeing....

I'll admit the first time I saw the Slenderman it gave me quite a jolt - it was pretty electric, all the hair stood up on my neck, arms and back and my heart was pumping after that! On my second attempt (still under the adrenalin of the first) I found myself more frustrated with the slowness of the game and the confusing map which felt like everything had moved (and probably had) and I bumped into the Slenderman on the second or third page again and I just found myself playfully dodging him around corners for a bit before I got bored and decided to walk on. After walking aimlessly until my battery died in my flashlight I called it quits and walked right towards him.

I had felt the shock effect of the game, but wasn't really interested in the actual gameplay. Still memorable, but without really good gameplay I doubt that many have played it more than once.